SC notice to CBI on Delhi government plea

New Delhi, March 4 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the CBI on the Delhi government’s plea seeking return of documents that the investigating agency had seized during the raid at the office of senior IAS officer Rajendra Kumar, principal secretary to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, on December 15, 2015.

A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Prafulla C. Pant issued notice on the Delhi government’s plea challenging the Delhi High Court’s February 10, 2016, order setting aside the January 20, 2016 lower court direction to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to hand over the documents to the Delhi government that it had seized.

Rajendra Kumar’s office is located next to the office of Chief Minister Kejriwal in the Delhi Secretariat.

The CBI had taken into its possession the documents from the office of Kumar during raid on December 15, 2015, in the wake of the allegations of wrong doing on the part of the said officer.

Soon after the raid, Kejriwal had claimed that his office was raided too, and had linked it to a probe he had ordered against the union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the allegations of corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) which Jaitley had headed earlier.

The CBI had denied searching Kejriwal’s office.

The high court by its February 10 order had said that in the trial court’s order, “error has been committed and jurisdiction has been exceeded in accepting the claim of the return of the documents, selected by the respondent no.1 (government), mentioned in para 8 of the application as it overshadows the investigation”.

Setting aside the lower court order, it had said that it is “…neither justifiable nor desirable as the relevancy is to be examined by the investigating officer and not by the court and the same tantamount to interference in the investigation conducted by the investigating officer.

“This court is of the considered opinion that requirement of documents for the purpose of investigation is to be examined and decided by the investigating officer and any direction to interfere in the same is not justified.”

The CBI had contended before the high court that it had followed proper procedure for undertaking the search and had claimed that the documents seized from the office of Rajendra Kumar “prima facie reflect criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct and abuse of official position by the accused people”.